A Virtualization Blog

A Virtualization Blog

So after arriving in the chaotically city of Las Vegas late Friday, I went to get registered today and got my official VMworld bag and complementary T-Shirt. Which leads to the first T-shirt review of VMworld 2017

The official T-shirt is again this an all black cotton shirt from Port Company, it features a nice and subtle VMworld 2017 logo at the front and a nice faded circuit board print on the back.

I would wish VMware would do the golf polos for the official shirt, as they hold shape and print so much better than these cotton ones

Score is 8 out of 10.

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So it’s this time of the year again, and there’s a lot of buzz around the virtualization community because of the two upcoming VMworlds, the US one in Las Vegas starting august 26th, and the European version in Barcelona, starting september 11. This year the EU one has moved forward from the usual week 42 spot. Which at least for northern Europe is a big plus, as week 42 usually is a fall holiday.

When going to VMworld there’s a couple of options for planning your week. I used to spend a lot of time in the Hands on Labs, but since these has been available afterwards the buzz about these has gone away. The main problem about this though is that getting the time to actually do the labs when you get home, usually is a problem. So if possible, do schedule a few hours for the Hands on Labs.

There’s of course also a lot of sessions to attend, and again in my first few VMworld I had a fully booked schedule, which leaves you running around a lot. Getting from one session to the next could have you walking more than a kilometer. My record was more than 30 km’s in one day (Vegas hotels are HUGE).

This year I’m focusing more on meeting with people, I have been lucky enough to be able to get meetings with a few product managers of some of the cooler stuff VMware creates, and a such I think I’ve only scheduled 10 or so sessions.

This also gives me ample room to wander the Solutions Exchange talking both with big vendors but also a lot of small new startups are present, and there are usually a few really cool ones, that you can see and demo. Especially coming from Europe there are a quite a few companies that seems to be US only.

This will be my 8th VMworld, having participated in 3 European ones and 4 US ones, I have to say I prefer the US ones. First of it is 1 day longer (at least), and all the right people are here. Working with VMware at Scale there are a lot more US companies at 20.000+ VM’s than there are in Europe. Usually most of the sessions do get repeated in Europe, but it not all, and its cramped in to 1 day less. Having been 3 times to San Francisco and once to Las Vegas, I must say I’d much rather go to San Francisco. It’s a way more European town. Vegas is fun to experience, but after a week your head is spinning and you can’t wait to get home 🙂 For a list of gatherings head here: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/gatherings

Around both conferences there are a lot of happenings, all from morning breakfast meetings, to late night parties, and again these are excellent places to meet new and interesting people from the community. Most of the “superstars” of the community are usually attending some of these and they easily approachable. Don’t be afraid to walk up and say hi. People like Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman, Cormac Hogan and Rawlinson Rivera are really down to earth and easy to talk to.

There will be a ton of blogs covering all the new and fancy things that are presented at VMworld, so I’m thinking I’ll do another round of T-shirt reviews this year.

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Lifelong learning.
That is really something to live by. Never stop learning and growing and you will be even more successful both at work and privately. Always seek ways to expand your mind and you will be forever better.

One of the greatest gifts given to vExperts is the year long access to PluralSight, who offers more than 5000 online courses, on everything from arts to technology. Even if you don’t get this for free, I truly recommend this. I had a subscription to PluralSight even before becoming a vExpert, and would buy a subscription again

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Wow, I’ve been selected as one of the top bloggers in Denmark, along with quite a lot of my own technical heroes in Denmark. Namely the Arrow ECS Blogger Board.

I’m very honored to be considered one of the bloggers that gives information back to the community, even though my blog posts aren’t often that technical as the rest of this blogger board. All 6 of the selected people are also designated vExperts, so its a really nice selection of people.

So I expect that this board of bloggers will post quite a few posts about VMware and virtualization in general. Today Frank Brix and myself was interviewed by Liselotte Foverskov from Arrow about our careers and community and VMware in general.

In less than two weeks time the now legendary Nordic VMug will take place at the Scandic Hotel in Copenhagen.

If you haven’t been to VMworld this is probably theVMug to attend, as it is shaped like a mini VMworld. There are keynotes, different tracks to choose from, giveaways and actually also something that looks like a small Solutions Exchange where the sponsors have stands, on which you can talk technicians and sales people from the respective sponsors and exhibitioners. Usually this a really nice way to have one to one with vendors where you can ask your questions without standing up in a room with 400 people to ask your question.

And as usual you will be joined by around 400 of your peers, fellow vSphere admins, powercli and java scripters. And I can truly say, that there is a huge variety in costumers, you will find them with setups that has 2 hosts and 25 VM’s up to 20.000 VM’s and 2.000 hosts. So there WILL be someone there with a setup close to yours, with whom you can talk to about theirs or your own setup. This networking part is the key in VMug, you’ll be able to connect with a lot of other costumers and VMware staff, that can help you in your day to day life,

If you haven’t signed up already you can head over here to do so, and if you work with VMware I encourage you to do so.

The setup of speakers this time, pretty much reads like who’s who of VMware fame. The opening keynote will be performed by Jeremy van Doorn, who has been one of the cohosters of #Vmworld TV.

Then there will be VMware superstars like the now returned Frank Denneman, with the closing keynote talking about the latest cloud move by VMware, where they can put VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services Cloud.

The ever pleasent Cormac Hogan will once again come to our VMug, this time to speak about Cloud Native Application projects that are running at VMware. Cormac is also know for his deep insights into VMware Storage.

Duncan Epping also again has agreed to come and give a presentation about vSAN, and this time will give us some insights on the roadmap and the future he sees for vSAN in the coming years.

Mike Foley of VMware will do a presentaion on Security features of vSphere, and most likely give a deep dive in to the new cool vSphere 6.5 security features that was just released. Security and Compliance is an ever increasing part of a vSphere Admin’s life, so be sure to attend this one.

Then there’s Lee Dilworth who previously has done presentation of vSphere streched Clustering along with Duncan. This time he will talk about the way vSAN I/O actually works. You can expect some good insights into this product.